Review: Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence

I love tea essences! My favorite is the very fancy Amorepacific one, which I don’t have in my routine as often as I’d like because of its outrageous price… I told you all about it in my dedicated Amorepacific Vintage Single Extract essence review, and for me, the price tag is justified considering the concentration and the quality of the ingredients, nevertheless, it’s a very expensive product, and thus a rare purchase for me.

So when I noticed last spring that Innisfree was launching a product that reminded me a lot of the Amorepacific essence concept (especially when you consider both brands are part of the same cosmetic group, Amorepacific Group), I literally jumped on it!

I wasn’t necessarily expecting a completely similar effect to the Amorepacific essence with the Innisfree one, but if I was able to get something close to it, that is already pretty good 😉

I started using the Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence at the beginning of summer. Let me tell you more about this product and my experience with it!

Skincare Review: Amorepacific Vintage Single Extract Essence This review is long overdue, I know! I tried this essence for the first time almost 4 years ago, so it’s not really a genuine discovery anymore. I’ve even repurchased it several times since then. It’s quite a unique product, with its own unique story and I think I owed it a dedicated article. So here is my review of the Vintage Single Extract Essence from the Korean premium skincare brand Amorepacific! Read more

Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence, product presentation:

The reason I love tea essences is because I find it’s an easy way to add a dose of antioxidants into my routine. With antioxidant ingredients, more is never too much! You can cumulate them, and the more you use, the better your skin is protected. 😉

With antioxidants, I could really see results on my skin in the very long term. They have actually been part of my skincare routine for almost 20 years and I know they are effective on anti-aging prevention. I can see it on my 43-year-old, almost 44-year-old skin, which still holds up pretty well. 😉

If you’ve ever heard of oxidative stress, free radicals, and photoaging of the skin, this is clearly a category of ingredients you should be interested in! Because antioxidants can indeed protect the skin from all these unwanted phenomena that make us age faster.

And tea is probably one of the stars of this category of ingredients! Its effects on the skin are definitely interesting: antioxidant, anti-aging, soothing and purifying… You can see why I always try to incorporate it into my routine. 😉

What is better, green tea or black tea? In reality, both come from the same plant: Camellia Sinensis. It is the transformations that the tea leaves undergo after being picked that determine the color of a tea.

As for Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence, it is composed of 80% fermented green tea, which gives it its darker color! However, it is originally made from green tea grown in the Jeju region of Korea, at the Seogwang Tea Garden.

For the extract used in the essence, it is made with a microwave extraction method using electromagnetic waves. This method apparently makes it possible to get more effective plant extracts.

To make it even more effective, the brand has added several anti-aging peptides to this “black” tea to create a complex, the Black Tea Peptide Activator™. This includes antioxidant fermented green tea and 8 anti-aging peptides (Acetyl Heptapeptide-4, Acetyl Hexapeptide-8, Acetyl Octapeptide-3, Acetyl Tetrapeptide-11, Copper Tripeptide-1, Hexapeptide-9, Soybean Polypeptide and Arginine).

The rest of the formula is also super appealing! It includes:
– some antioxidant ingredients: niacinamide, a vitamin C derivative (3-0-Ethyl Ascorbic Acid) and Centella Asiatica,
– anti-aging adenosine,
– hydrating glycerin and hyaluronic acid,
– and fermented ingredients (Saccharomyces) and glutathione for brightening.

In short, a very complete formula that works on the radiance of the complexion, an anti-aging and antioxidant effect, but also on the hydration and soothing of the skin! All this in a fresh and thirst-quenching texture, yummy!😍

Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence, my experience:

I was about to write that a tea-based essence was a perfect product for summer, but you know what? I actually use them all year round, like I drink tea all year round, by the way! 😉

The Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence could be considered as a “First Essence”, those essences with fermented ingredients you apply at the very beginning of your skincare routine and will optimize the effectiveness of the other products used on top of it (I explained the concept of the “First Essence” in more detail in this article).

This is actually how I use it, and its very liquid texture encourages me to use it that way even more. It absorbs very quickly, leaving my skin fresh and quenched. You can actually add several layers if you want; the thirst-quenching and soothing effect is even more effective 🙂

I really like to use it in the morning, directly after cleansing and patting my skin dry or right after applying my vitamin C serum, but always before my other specific skincare products like my serums and moisturizer. You can totally use it at night too if you want.

I appreciate its immediate hydrating and soothing qualities. I’ve been using it for several weeks now and I’ve also noticed a beneficial effect on the radiance of my complexion!

As always, I can’t really tell you about the effectiveness of its antioxidant power, since it’s preventive and will be noticeable in the very long term.

But I can tell you it’s a product that I find very pleasant to use. The texture is super fresh, my skin literally drinks it up. That’s why I prefer to use it in the morning, this fresh and thirst-quenching feeling is very appreciated by my skin when I wake up!

It may just be a detail for many, but I also love the packaging of this essence. Knowing that Innisfree is a “road shop” brand in Korea ( in other words, a mid-range brand), I think that this glass bottle is quite chic!

If I had to compare it with my favorite essence Amorepacific Vintage Single Extract, I would say that it stands up pretty well. I don’t get as much of the retexturizing and soothing effect, but it makes up for it on the brightening and hydrating action, so I don’t feel like I’m losing out. And it’s clearly more affordable, so this is also a win in that front! 😉

It’s probably going to last me a while too (probably 6 months in total), which is definitely a plus.

In conclusion:

I’m quite hooked on this Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence! It’s pretty (yes, it’s important!), fun to use and I see good results in my complexion’s radiance.

It’s probably going to stay in my routine for a while, and I will happily come back to it too 🙂

The Innisfree Black Tea Youth Enhancing Treatment Essence retails between $36 and $40 for 145ml, depending on the retailers.